Poetics of Movement. Dance Texts 1800, 1900, 2000

Dance texts, i.e. texts on the topic of dance, deal with the concept of movement as it appears in modern notions of reality, subject, and art in a very particular way. The texts take up the double meaning of movement: in the sense of emotional and dance movement. They also convey reflections on how movement can be expressed in and through writing. However, this intriguing, fertile constellation encompassing dance, emotion, and writing has hardly been explored. The present project seeks to close this research gap. With it, the project aims to bring together the perspectives of literary studies, theories of emotions, and dance aesthetics for the first time. The guiding idea is that dance texts establish a productive relationship between dance, emotion, and writing concerning their topics and/or their structure. In doing so, they address questions of representing and of communicating social, and aesthetic processes as well as those related to media and to systems of knowledge. The tension resulting from such processes creates particular poetics, which I will describe under the heading of poetics of movement. Based on detailed analyses, the project will mainly compare and contrast French dance texts from around 1800, 1900, and 2000, as those were and still are most important in the discussion of movement. The core texts to be analysed are by Abbé du Bos, Jean-Georges Noverre, André Levinson, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, William Forsythe, Jérôme Bel, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The periods chosen are typical examples of shifts in modern notions of the subject, of art, and of reality. These shifts become apparent in innovations both in theatrical dance and in the study of emotions. Dance texts show and reflect on these changing paradigms, since they establish movement as constitutive element of the aesthetics of modern-era texts. Thus, the study of these texts and their reflections make the comparative analysis of the underlying poetics of movement possible. Methodologically, the project brings together approaches of dance research, the study of emotions, and the study of writing, using figuration, scene and scenario as the guiding categories. Text analysis specifically focuses on the physical/aesthetic figuration of the dancer, on written forms of staging psychophysical movements, and on the correlating (emotional) self-understanding of the writers. The project wants to demonstrate the relevance of dance for modern arts and literature. Moreover, it is the first project ever aiming to describe psychophysical movement as a central aspect of modern poetics and aesthetics.

The comparative study of mainly French dance texts at crucial historical periods provide insights into the differentiation of an understanding of movement, that refers to modernity, and 'writing' as a literary process. The habilitation thesis as the first focus deals with dance texts of the 18th century and their predecessors, in particular texts by Arbeau, Ménestrier, Feuillet, Rameau, Weaver, Cahusac and Noverre as well as texts on movement and emotion theory by Descartes, Du Bos, Batteux, d'Holbach, Diderot and the encyclopedists. Individual essays on Valéry's dance texts and the cooperative publication project between the choreographer De Keersmaeker and the musicologist Cvejić as well as the publication of the interdisciplinary volume about Bewegungsszenarien der Moderne. Theorien und Schreibpraktiken physischer und emotionaler Bewegung (2021) provide exemplary insights into the periods around 1900 and 2000 and serve as the second and third focal points. The texts were each examined as discourse-practice formations, as they not only present writing, emotion and dance practices, but also initiate their discursivization as well as their appropriation and further development. The research focused on the question of how movement can be conveyed in the dual sense of physical and emotional movement in and through writing. Methodologically, the text analysis was based on the transdisciplinary categories of the 'figure', the 'scene' and the 'scenario', thereby contributing to a consolidation of perspectives from literary, cultural and dance studies, and emotion theory. The representation of individual movement concepts is based on a combination of different areas of knowledge and cultural practices, ranging from philosophy, anatomy, physics and chemistry to dance, literature, painting and historiography, that form specific poetologies of movement and enable a literary and aesthetic differentiation of the texts. The analysis was based on the 'telling' of movement, which was distinguished from a vivid description or 'showing' of the movement and a 'showing of the text itself'. The term 'dance text', which is commonly used in dance studies, was thus sharpened for literary and cultural studies analysis. The resistances in the transmedia transfer of 'dance' into 'text', but also the necessity of developing alternative forms of writing, run as a topos through the texts from Arbeau's Orchésographie to De Keersmaekers A Choreographer's Score. The fact that writing is not perceived as a neutral medium in any of the texts examined, can be seen as a strong indication of a modern understanding of literature that sees the writing of and about dance as both culturally conditioned and culture-forming. Of special interest to cultural studies is the finding that concepts of movement in 18th century dance texts already point to a holistic view of human beings that understands people as embedded in practices of sign and symbol use and action.